G.S., who has had perhaps as much jungle experience as any man of his age in India, a careful observer, and a finished sportsman, tells me that the biggest boar he ever saw was only thirty-eight inches high; while the biggest pig he ever killed was a barren sow, with three-inch tusks sticking out of her gums; she measured thirty-nine-and-a-half inches, and fought like a demon.  I have shot pig—­in heavy jungle where spearing was impracticable—­over thirty-six inches high, but the biggest pig I ever stuck to my own spear was only twenty-eight inches, and I do not think any pig has been killed in Chumparun, within the last ten or a dozen years at any rate, over thirty-eight inches.

In some parts of India, where pigs are numerous and the jungle dense, the natives adopt a very ingenious mode of hunting.  I have frequently seen it practised by the cowherds on the Koosee derahs, i.e. the flat swampy jungles on the banks of the Koosee.  When the annual floods have subsided, leaving behind a thick deposit of mud, wrack, and brushwood, the long thick grass soon shoots up to an amazing height, and vast herds of cattle and tame buffaloes come down to the jungles from the interior of the country, where natural pasture is scarce.  They are attended by the owner and his assistants, all generally belonging to the gualla, or cowherd caste, although, of course, there are other castes employed.  The owner of the herd gets leave to graze his cattle in the jungle, by paying a certain fixed sum per head.  He fixes on a high dry ridge of land, where he runs up a few grass huts for himself and men, and there he erects lines of grass and bamboo screens, behind which his cattle take shelter at night from the cold south-east wind.  There are also a few huts of exceedingly frail construction for himself and his people.  This small colony, in the midst of the universal jungle covering the country for miles round, is called a batan.

At earliest dawn the buffaloes are milked, and then with their attendant herdsmen they wend their way to the jungle, where they spend the day, and return again to the batan at night, when they are again milked.  The milk is made into ghee, or clarified butter, and large quantities are sent down to the towns by country boats.  When we want to get up a hunt, we generally send to the nearest batan for khubber, i.e. news, information.  The Batanea, or proprietor of the establishment, is well posted up.  Every herdsman as he comes in at night tells what animals he has seen through the day, and thus at the batan you hear where tiger, and pig, and deer are to be met with; where an unlucky cow has been killed; in what ravine is the thickest jungle; where the path is free from clay, or quicksand; what fords are safest; and, in short, you get complete information on every point connected with the jungle and its wild inhabitants.